My current research focuses on the history, practices, and consequence of global liberalism in world politics. The international system, since the nineteenth century, has been constituted by a set of discourses and institutions emphasizing individual rights, emancipation, and civilization. Existing research focuses on the logics of liberal peace and the decline of war, the rise of the influence of transnational actors in international law, and the refinement of cosmopolitan arguments about international ethics for a liberalized world order. My research complicates such arguments by examining how assorted outcomes, diverse actors, and alternative liberal imaginaries affect our understanding of international liberalism, human rights, and the politics of resistance.

These issues are theoretically, normatively, and empirically important. Examining the connection between liberalism and international practices allows us to better understand the relationship between ideology and international outcomes. Furthermore, with relatively recent interventions in states such as Afghanistan and Iraq, the role of a liberal world order in constituting new security and institutional configurations holds significance for the global public sphere. The larger theme connecting my research approach is an attempt to integrate social and political theory into the study of world politics, and an exploration of what that means for the politics of liberalism, human rights, and the deployment of violence.

Book and Related Research

In Liberalism and Transformation: The Global Politics of Violence and Intervention, I argue that a particular strand of liberal ideology, what I have termed emancipatory liberalism, has a long, and complicated, historical connection with violence and intervention in word politics. Emancipatory liberalism is a paternalistic liberalism with the primary aim of freeing individuals from the chains that bind them. It includes an understanding of the liberal project as a universal one: one that requires the fortunate and enlightened to “save” those who are in trouble through the imposition of human rights regimes and enforcing obligations of justice. The aim of this book is to draw out the effects of emancipatory liberalism, its interaction with institutions of force, and the interplay between practices of violence on the ground and the discourses of liberty that give rise to them. This book illustrates the intertwined history of violence and emancipatory liberalism to show the deep connections between ideology, culture, discourse, and intervention in international society. In another vein, this book is about discourses and their power in international politics. Discourses structure international politics, influence the way that states act, and allow actors to interpret their positions, practices, and beliefs about the world.

Furthermore, this book invites readers to reflect on global ethics and transformation in world politics. First, it shows how ethical imaginings of the world have direct effects on actions of transformative importance. Second, it suggests that discourses about rights are fluid, changing, and complex. This has implications for the transformative potential of alternatives and dissident perspectives. Additionally, it opens the space for such an alternative perspective. It is a central theme of this critical history of the use of violence in international politics that the structure of world society need not be one structured around violence and intervention. A focus on what I call “minimalist” liberalism as the basis for international society, a topic further elaborated in the concluding chapter, finds a foothold in a variety of dissenting discourses that have existed alongside emancipatory imaginings of world politics. The book manuscript itself is complete. It is under formal review at University of Michigan Press.

This book project has produced a series of articles. One such article, “Discourse, Genealogy, and Methods of Text Selection in International Relations,” is forthcoming at Cambridge Review of International Affairs. This article interrogates the use of genealogical methods in international relations theory, drawing on examples from work about sovereignty, humanitarianism/human rights, and activism. It elaborates a method of discourse analysis used in the book.

Another article drawing on material from chapter five of the book is currently under review at the British Journal of Politics and International Relations. This article, titled “A Pessimistic Liberalism: Jacob Talmon’s Suspicion and the Birth of Contemporary Political Thought,” critically examines the political thought of historian Jacob Talmon, and particularly the way that his “pessimistic liberalism” relates to broader Cold War imaginaries about rights, obligations, and political action. I have also authored a forthcoming book chapter on related themes for an edited volume under contract with Palgrave MacMillan.

Other Research

In future and ongoing research, I am further pursuing my interest in human rights, global justice, and the politics of liberalism. First, a coauthored paper with Scott Weiner (The George Washington University) titled “Rethinking Identity in Political Science,” examines the conceptual issues in political science related to identity, and proposes a new model for thinking about identity politics and social justice movements from the perspective of visibility, conceptualization, and rights recognition. This article is under review at Perspectives on Politics. I plan to expand this project into an edited volume or a journal special issue that will explore these themes in the context of global movements for rights and recognition. In that vein, I am in the process of applying for an NSF workshop grant to begin developing chapters for that collaborative project.

Second, I am developing a set of articles on radicalism and social movements in international politics. The first of these, “Toward a Radical IR,” is a conceptual analysis of the concept of “radicalism,” and how the field of international relations can benefit from engaging with this concept. The second of these, “Radicalism and the Liberal World Order: The Successes and Failures of Social Justice Movements,” examines how radical social justice movements have challenged liberalization in world politics. I use the case of Occupy Wall Street to develop a theory of why these movements sometimes succeed and sometimes fail in their aims. I plan to develop these ideas into a second book project.

Two projects that are more distant examine human rights and global liberalism from other angles. The first of these is an article that examines the normative foundations of human rights in the context of the anthropocene, climate change, and environmental destruction. I plan to propose this as a conference paper for the annual meeting of the International Studies Association 2020, with eventual submission to Journal of Political Philosophy or Political Theory. The second of these projects is a series of articles further studying Cold War liberalism and discourses of human rights in the political and social thought of the 1950s and 1960s.